Award Categories

Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year

But with growth come many new problems, from an expanding workload and the pressure to maximise efficiencies, to the need for more productivity in the face of higher demands.

As a buzzword, scalability has been more prevalent in recent years because technology has made it easier to forensically analyse a company’s performance. Such intense scrutiny has made life even harder for scale-intent business owners, as there’s simply nowhere to hide.

While there remains no official international accreditation for the businesses at this stage of growth, scale-ups are without question an essential component of our economy.

The Scale-up Entrepreneur of the Year Award seeks to redress the balance by championing entrepreneurs that have put everything into strategising the expansion and cost of doing business. Behind them, a very traceable history of extending reach and revenue. Ahead of them lies the constant hunt for business multipliers.

Remember, the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards celebrate and champions the stories of entrepreneurs. True entrepreneurs are as much about their story as they are about their balance sheet. The NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards celebrate the truly inspiring entrepreneurs who are the agents of positive change in our country.

Application top tips:

Don’t fall back on cliches and tired story lines.

Don’t undersell yourself, your business and your hard work.

Give us the truth, not just the formula.

You (the entrepreneur) are the hero/heroine of your story; tell us about your ingenuity, your insight.

FAQs

There is no specific entry criteria for the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards. As long as you are an entrepreneur, and your business is registered and operates in the UK, you are free to enter!

Yes, you will have the opportunity to save an application. In order to do this, you will need to register for an account and ensure you remember your login details, as these will allow you to access your account in the future.

Absolutely! If you feel that your business is suited to more than one category, we actively encourage you to enter more than one. However, do be sure to tailor each application to the relevant category, rather than using the same generic application across all.

Each question within the application is limited to a maximum of 500 words, with a minimum of 300, and the process is broken down into multiple segments, which we believe will give you plenty of opportunity to fully explain your entry. The word count cannot be extended.

Yes, there is the opportunity to upload supporting documents along with your submission during the application process. All supporting documents will be provided to the judging panel alongside your application. There is a maximum upload limit of 10MB for these supporting documents.

An application can be amended after it is submitted up until the entry closing date, however we advise against this. It is for this reason that we highly recommend that submissions are thoroughly proofed beforehand.

The NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards have a stellar panel of judges across multi sectors.

Each judge is allocated entries which match their areas of expertise.
Your entry will be judged based on answers to the 4 qualitative questions on the entry form along with supporting documents uploaded.

The judges will mark each question and give a rating out of 10 and make comments to justify their scoring.

Based on the ethos that these awards celebrate the story of the entrepreneur and not just the balance sheet, there is an element of subjectivity around judging. Applicants should make sure they really use the space to highlight the key milestones within their journey.

In previous years, judges have scored applications highly that shine a light on innovation, challenges overcome, adversity, vision, passion and tenacity.

Judges will review applications independently, however judges within a category may also collaborate with one another, particularly if the scoring is close.